


Dead to Rights

by subterranean_lovesick_alien



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angsty old guys, M/M, Porn With Plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:18:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6930334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subterranean_lovesick_alien/pseuds/subterranean_lovesick_alien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCree goes to Dorado to catch up with ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead to Rights

Houston was a bust, and he’s never much liked jail. Veering south, skirting the coastal bend on the 59, he strikes for Mexico City on a nondescript Greyhound bus. Old and reliable, the way he likes it. Downside is it’s slower than a herd of longhorns crossing a one-lane road. Upside’s they’ll sell folks like him a ticket.

After a few dozen miles he slips into highway hypnosis, brought on by watching the uniform markers flash past while ruminating on rumors and archaic wanted posters. Combined with the heat—inescapable even in the clammy climate-controlled bus—it numbs his brain like a drug. Other passengers, scant, are arrayed in the perfect configuration for excusable unapproachability. That suits him just as well. The only words he exchanges are with the driver, a leathery Latino who he asks if he can smoke. In Spanish, the driver tells him he can if he opens a window. The window’s already open, but McCree exhales upward toward the crack of fresh air in an afterthought of politeness.

Soupy squalid marshland gives way to arid flatness. His fellow travelers diminish in number, disembarking in Victoria then with transfers headed for Corpus Christi and the lurid coast.

The desert stretches boundless into sky, broken only by hobbled mesquites and tattered scrubbrush, the forlorn but resolute settlers of inhospitable territory. Above, contrails of clouds rocket across painful blue, lending it a dizzying sense of infinity. He can feel the slip of paper in his pocket like a dropped cigarette burning a hole in his trousers. He wonders if the crisp bills in the driver’s till—and under his seat—ever bore into his brain as tangibly.

He’s always liked this stretch. It’s almost otherworldly in its isolation, and there’s nowhere else in the world blue is bluer. At the risk of dating his sensibilities, he would say it’s a place out of time. It’s like him. As the sun slumps he dozes fitfully.

Nearly the moment they enter Webb County, his heartbeat quickens and stabs of anxiety dislodge him from his stupor. He squirms in his seat, urging feeling back into his numb ass, his palms flattened against his lined pockets. His latest cigar’s gone out, but he doesn’t bother relighting it. He chances a quick glance around at the few remaining passengers, but they’re serene; hemmed in; inscrutable.

His pulse fairly thunders in his ears as the bus approaches Laredo, but the crossing is blessedly uneventful. A patrolman boards, stares at McCree for several breathstalling heartbeats as he checks his (expertly faked) documents, and clomps back outside with unnecessary gusto and barely contained intimidation. The air conditioning was hard not to envy, and the passengers all checked out. The slip of paper in his pocket is untouched and unasked for. McCree’s face is scattered across every news outlet in the country, but he’s rid himself of almost every one of his distinctive identifying markers—hat, sarape, armor, Peacekeeper (stowed in a seamlessly incorporated compartment under the driver’s seat, along with his payoff), scraggly beard. A long-sleeved shirt and a convincing prosthetic disguise his cybernetic arm, and he presents his documentation with his intact right hand. Retinal scanners and facial recognition are as unheard of in Laredo as second guesses.

The bus stops in Monterrey, and he decides he’ll take the long way to Mexico City, and disembarks. He retrieves Peacekeeper from the driver with a generous tip. He ventures into the city, and buys a sarape and a hat.

The longer stretch of the journey to Dorado is as smooth as the first, but—hard part out of the way—McCree’s spirits are high and he meanders through, much slower than in Texas, hitching rides and hobnobbing with locals, getting drunk off his ass. It’s still weeks until the anniversary of La Medianoche.

Most nights he sleeps under the stars, in the sticky summer heat, woozy with bourbon mixed into tamarind agua fresca, his head pillowed on his bunched sarape. As he nears Mexico City the rain increases to unbearable frequency, and he’s forced to hunker in cheap hostels with moldering walls and piss-reek mattresses.

When he reaches Dorado it’s to find the city festooned in parade regalia: vibrant paper decorations, kaleidoscope lanterns, enticing stalls. Equally vibrant are the crowds, and he slips into the pulsing bloodstream of not-so-breathless expectation unnoticed.

The skyline is dominated by its newest feature. The pyramidal LumeriCo plant, with its harsh glass and metal angles and pulsing lines of blue light, contrasts jarringly with the soft, arched stucco buildings of the city proper. McCree is uncomfortably reminded of the juxtaposition of his own cybernetic against his old-fashioned everything else. Replacement wasn’t painless, even with assurances of _amelioration_.

He’s disoriented, despite Dorado’s familiarity. He almost stops to ask a reveler which direction it is to the abandoned Overwatch facility before remembering these days it’s like asking where the old terrorist headquarters is. The streets twist and turn, and he wanders for an hour before happening upon a familiar vantage point, a particular arrangement of colors and corners that stirs sudden recognition and leads him onward like emergency lights.

The slip of paper in his pocket burns. He takes a deep breath in through his nose and lights a cigar, stowing the lighter next to the paper. Unable to resist, he digs it out. The sickly orange glow from his drag illuminates it as he brings it up to look for what feels like the millionth time.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally intended this to be a one-shot PWP, but I'm apparently incapable of it. I wanted to post this chapter before the 76 short drops in t minus 4 1/2 hours.
> 
> We'll see how much of this plot is sunk by the short! I'll continue this regardless, but it will likely be canon-divergent.
> 
> Porn will be in the next chapter, I promise!


End file.
